


Binaries

by hapax (hapaxnym)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: All Talk No Action, M/M, Philosophy, mostly meta, wee bit o' fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26179771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hapaxnym/pseuds/hapax
Summary: “I know what the word means,” the demon said irritably. “That’s not what I meant. Haven’t we,” he waved a hand, “opted out of all that now? Not that most of it didn’t even apply in the first place. Why have we got to be thinking about them now?”“Don’t be ridiculous, my dear. That’s not the way the world works. We may not have sides anymore, strictly speaking, but that doesn’t mean we can simply …. ‘opt out.’ ”This fic actually started as long comment on a FB group with the prompt:Describe how ‘the binary’ is expressed/treated in GO? Start with the big binary of Heaven vs Hell, good vs bad, and light vs dark."Then the bois wanted to have their say, and, well, you know how it goes...
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Binaries

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to the Good Omens Ethnography group on FaceBook, and especially @RoxiJElliot for making me think the Big Thinky-Thoughts.

“Binaries!” exclaimed Aziraphale, leaning forward for emphasis. “That’s the point!”  
Crowley, who had arranged himself on the sofa with all the careless grace of a dropped bag of marbles, blinked at him in confusion. “Wot?”

“Binaries,” the angel repeated. “You know, opposite—and opposing—absolutes. Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, Light and Dark, Life and Death, Male and Female… That’s what we need to be thinking about!”

“I know what the word _means_ ,” the demon said irritably. “That’s not what I _meant_. Haven’t we,” he waved a hand, “opted out of all that now? Not that most of it didn’t even apply in the first place. Why have we got to be thinking about them now?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, my dear. That’s not the way the world works. We may not have _sides_ anymore, strictly speaking, but that doesn’t mean we can simply …. ‘opt out.’ ”

“’Zactly what that means,” Crowley grumbled.

“No, it does not. There may not be any true Absolutes manifest in the universe—well, except for, er” Aziraphale stumbled against their tacit agreement to never, _ever_ talk about Her—“but Creation is nonetheless dependent upon them. A multi-dimensional grid pattern, as it were, with every corner tethered to opposing binary absolutes.”

The demon took a large swallow from his wineglass. “Bollocks.”

“That is _not_ a cogent refutation, dear boy.” Aziraphale pause to refill his own glass. “I’ll agree that most often things manifest more as a, a, spectrum. Infinite shades of grey, rather than true Black or White. But that very gradation by necessity implies the existence of absolutes at either end. As that lovely Professor Dodgson put it, _the further off from England, the nearer is to France_ …”

“ _Turn not pale, beloved snail_!” Crowley interjected, unexpectedly.

“ _but come and join the dance_. Quite. But the point is… the _point_ is, that England and France … dear me, what are they putting into crepes these days … that is to say, the absolute binary still exists, to anchor the grid we must all exist upon,” the angel concluded triumphantly. “That is how She planned it.”

“But it’s still bollocks,” the demon insisted. “Bollocks to whatever plan.”

“Look, I understand that you do not care overmuch for Plans, these days, and quite prefer chaos to order, but…”

“S’nothing to do with _chaos_ ,” Crowley interrupted. He sat up straight (well, straight-er) and jabbed a finger at the angel to make his point. “S the whole bloody ‘grid’ nonsense. I know that planners are all for them, and keep trying to _impose_ them, but you know as well as I do that they never _stick_.” He chopped the air with his hands. “You’ve seen it. Plans always call for the perfect pretty grids, but once the city is physically built, people refuse to follow them. Humans meander. They take shortcuts. They puddle around the most random places. Always.”

“Erm…” Aziraphale didn’t want to concede, but he had to admit that the other had scored a point.

“And it’s cuz of your bloody _binaries_. Go straight OR turn. Turn left OR right. Tha’ss not how people, _real_ people, in the _real_ world, actually DO.”

“Very well,” the angel huffed. “And how, pray tell, would _you_ say the world is put together?”

Crowley pondered. “S like … like … those thingies, you know. The road thingies. Ones you go around about?”

“Roundabouts?”

“YES. Roundabouts!” The demon punched the air. “Now don’t start, I know what you’re going to say, everybody thinks that Hell came up with them, but that’s because they focus on how they make you _feel_ , instead of what they actually _do_.”

“Which is?”

“S’like you’re at a place, you know?” Crowley said in a confiding tone. “Then you’re driving along, just living your life, and then there’s the thingy. The roundabout. And it isn’t a binary choice, it’s a maybe here, or possibly there, or could be the other, all these options, and sometimes you get shaved off accidentally to a different place altogether, or even you’re on the inner ring, and then you get stuck going around and around and around FOR AN ETERNIIITTTTTTYYYYYYY…”

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “I must say, you’re not exactly putting together a convincing case for them _not_ being an Infernal invention.”

“Weelllllll…” the demon pouted. “Nother name for roundabouts is carousels.”

The angel brightened. “Oh, I do like carousels!” He wriggled a bit in his seat. “Do you remember when we took Warlock to Brighton? And we all rode on the seaside carousel?”

“Yup,” Crowley nodded. “Wooden horses. Hard on the buttocks.”

“Ah, but it was still very delightful. And I understand many carousels these days offer alternatives to horses. Tigers, elephants, gorillas, porpoises…”

“Ducks?”

“Probably. And yes, I see what you mean. Around and around, eternally, of course; but also up and down, sometimes weaving through…” Aziraphale looked pensive. “But still, as charming as it is, one isn’t going anywhere. It still does not offer any promising option for … escaping … the binary altogether.”

“Tha’ss the point, angel,” the demon flopped back down in satisfaction. “You’re thinking about thisss all wrong. Grids, roads, plans… they don’t have a thing to do with binaries. Tha’ss not how they work. Tha’ss not what they _are_.”

“I beg your pardon, it is _you_ who is confused…”

“Alpha Centauri.”

“What? I don’t …” Aziraphale suddenly looked very sad. “Oh. Of course. That’s where you wanted to escape to, before … Oh, my dearest. I’ve said it before, but truly, I am so very sorry…”

“NO!” Crowley blurted out. “Nononononono. Not that. I meant… ‘S a binary star. Well, really a triple star system, but AB form a binary …. Ughhhh. Look. Two stars. Not tethered to distant opposites, but revolving around a common center. Which is as much a theera … a thorrtica … a _made_ - _up_ thingy as your absolutes, but shared. Tha’ss a _proper_ binary. And that’s how you escape.”

The angel shook his head. “I don’t … I was following, up to that last part, but …” He tried to pour himself some more wine, but the bottle was empty. He frowned at it, and snapped his fingers. His glass obligingly refilled.

“Like you said. With the lobsters.”

“Ohhhhh…” Aziraphale steepled his fingers against his forehead. “Now I am _completely_ lost. Perhaps I should sober up.”

“Ah-ah-ah-ah!” The demon waved his arms, almost propelling himself off the sofa. “No need for drastic measures. I meant … You don’t escape by, by, popping off the grid. _Can’t_ , anyways. You’re right there. Gravity never lets you go, ‘s a tenacious bugger.”

“So one cannot escape?”

“You gotta jump _in_. Tha’ss how you do it. Like Alpha Centauri C.” Crowley made an attempt to mime the astrophysics of a distant star system with his fingers, but the intricacies would have been beyond him even if he were sober. “You escape the binary by … joining in. Don't hafta accept the endpoints to find a space within. Making yourself part of the whole push and pull, the ins and outs and ups and downs and around you go. Like your carousel.”

“ _Will you, won’t you, will you join the dance_?” The angel murmured. “I suspect that it is much easier to describe than to perform, alas. Especially for me.” He smiled ruefully. “I am a terrible dancer, you know.”

“Not _that_ bad. ‘Ve seen you dance.”

“That’s very kind of…” Aziraphale began, before a hiss from the demon cut him off. “But be honest. Angels aren’t meant to dance. Not literally, and not … well, not in any sense, I don’t think.”

“Don’t have to.” Crowley fell forward onto his face and muttered into the cushion something that sounded very much like _czrrrmskk_.

“I beg your pardon?”

Crowley turned his head to the side and enunciated more clearly. “Don’t have to dance. ‘Cause you’re _music_. Melody. Hear it, always.” He rubbed his eyes. “M’sorry. Shouldn’t say that. M very drunk.”

“Oh. Oh.” The angel turned bright pink. “Oh, thank you. What a lovely thing to say.” He considered the demon sprawled on the sofa, now a fiery crimson color. “Well. I must say, if I am melody, then … you must be rhythm, I think.”

Crowley fell off the sofa. “ _Ngk_.”

Aziraphale warmed to the metaphor. “Yes. Indeed. One could even say the heartbeat of my existence.” He smiled at Crowley, who was pulling the cushions off the sofa and piling them over himself, in an attempt to hide from being seen. “That’s a lovely way to think of binaries, dear one. Melody and rhythm, fine enough by themselves, I suppose; but abstract. Empty. Yet together … not just side by side, but intermingled, weaving in and out of each other, making each other richer, stronger, more real … Together, they _dance_.”

The angel stood up from his chair and stretched out a hand to where the demon lay on the floor, blinking at his fingers. “Shall we then, darling?”

And they did.


End file.
